TC The Cryosphere TC 1994-0424 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/tc-6-1339-2012 Brief communication "Historical glacier length changes in West Greenland" Leclercq P. W. 1 Weidick A. 2 Paul F. 3 Bolch T. 3 4 Citterio M. 2 Oerlemans J. 1 IMAU, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands GEUS, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Copenhagen, Denmark Department of Geography, University of Zürich-Irchel, Zürich, Switzerland Institute for Cartography, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany 15 11 2012 6 6 1339 1343 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.the-cryosphere.net/6/1339/2012/tc-6-1339-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.the-cryosphere.net/6/1339/2012/tc-6-1339-2012.pdf

Past glacier fluctuations provide insight into glacier dynamics, climate change, and the contribution of glaciers to sea-level rise. Here, the length fluctuations since the 19th century of 18 local glaciers in West and South Greenland are presented, extending and updating the study by Weidick (1968). The studied glaciers all showed an overall retreat with an average of 1.2 ± 0.2 km over the 20th century, indicating a general rise of the equilibrium line along the west coast of Greenland during the last century. Furthermore, the average rate of retreat was largest in the first half of the 20th century.

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